2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull
and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to
a town,
you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent,
other chieftains will spring up to take advantage
of your extremity. Then no man, however
wise,
will be able to avert the consequences that must
ensue.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,
cleverness has never been seen associated with long
delays.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited
from prolonged warfare.
7. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted
with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand
the profitable way of carrying it on.
8. The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy,
neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.
9. Bring war material with you from home, but forage
on the enemy. Thus the army will have food
enough
for its needs.
10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army
to be maintained by contributions from a distance.
Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes
the people to be impoverished.
11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes
prices to go up; and high prices cause the people's
substance to be drained away.
12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry
will be afflicted by heavy exactions.
13,14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion
of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped
bare,
and three-tenths of their income will be dissipated;
while government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out
horses,
breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and
shields,
protective mantles, draught-oxen and heavy wagons,
will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.
15. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging
on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy's
provisions
is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise
a single picul of his provender is equivalent to
twenty
from one's own store.
16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must
be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from
defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.
17. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots
have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the
first.
Our own flags should be substituted for those of the
enemy,
and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with
ours.
The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and
kept.
18. This is called, using the conquered foe to augment
one's own strength.
19. In war, then, let your great object be victory,
not lengthy campaigns.
20. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies
is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom
it
depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in
peril.
III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM
1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best
thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and
intact;
to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So,
too, it is
better to recapture an army entire than to destroy
it,
to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company
entire
than to destroy them.
2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles
is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence
consists
in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to
balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent
the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in
order is to attack the enemy's army in the field;
and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled
cities.
4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it
can possibly be avoided. The preparation of
mantlets,
movable shelters, and various implements of war, will
take
up three whole months; and the piling up of mounds
over
against the walls will take three months more.
5. The general, unable to control his irritation,
will launch his men to the assault like swarming
ants,
with the result that one-third of his men are slain,
while the town still remains untaken. Such are
the disastrous
effects of a siege.
6. Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's
troops without any fighting; he captures their cities
without laying siege to them; he overthrows their
kingdom
without lengthy operations in the field.
7. With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery
of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his
triumph
will be complete. This is the method of
attacking by stratagem.